Brown Eyes
by Kaiser Washington
Summary: Rukawa becomes interested in Haruko the moment Haruko inexplicably loses interest in him. RuHaru. One-shot.


Standard disclaimers apply.

Summary: Rukawa becomes interested in Haruko the moment Haruko inexplicably loses interest in him. RuHaru. One-shot.

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**Brown Eyes**

Those soft brown eyes. Rukawa knew them too well. He could see them from across the gym during practice, from across the court during games – large, watery, passionate. Eyes that fixed onto him like old gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Rukawa had found them annoying at first, but soon they became a source of comfort – something that he knew would always be there, even if everything else disappeared. It was the kind of bland platonic comfort one felt in taking the same path to school every day – in being able to anticipate every crosswalk, every turning in one's sleep. Haruko Akagi's eyes were the same.

Until they disappeared.

Haruko went on a long trip to America with her family in the middle of the school year, and when she returned, she was a changed person. It took Rukawa a good week to realize that Haruko's gaze no longer lingered on him during practice. Her eyes hardly fell on him at all. Girls are so fickle, he thought. Last year it was all she could do not to brush against his elbow in the corridor at every chance she got, just so she could feel his skin against hers. Inane and highly rehearsed opening lines had led to many an awkward conversation that had fizzled out pathetically after a couple of sentences, like old fireworks that had been stored in a damp basement. Once – rather disturbingly – he thought he'd seen her nostrils dilate slightly as he passed close to her after a game, drenched with sweat.

That same Haruko Akagi, now that she'd become the assistant manageress of the basketball team and had a legitimate reason to be around Rukawa, had the nerve to become disenchanted with him? Was Haruko's love for Rukawa so weak that the breeze from taking a step toward her goal was enough to put it out?

"Miyagi-senpai," said Rukawa gravely at the end of practice one day.

"What is it Rukawa?"

"Can I ask you a favor?"

Miyagi was intrigued. Rukawa was not one to ask favors of his teammates, unless it was to tell them to stop sucking.

"Can you ask Ayako-senpai if Haruko has fallen out of love with me?"

Miyagi paused to take a swig out of his water bottle just so he could make a show of spitting it out in shock.

"Since when do you care what Haruko-chan feels, or anybody else for that matter?'

"Just ask her, okay?"

The following day Rukawa stayed back in the locker room after practice, staring at Miyagi like a cat.

"Did you ask her?"

"I did." He hadn't.

A pause. Rukawa did not like pauses that he was not responsible for.

"Well, what did she say?"

"Ayako said that Haruko Akagi is very much" – here Miyagi paused for effect – "one hundred percent, completely over you."

Rukawa stood up.

"Over me?"

"As in she wouldn't notice you if you were standing in a doorway and she was trying to get through."

"How?" Rukawa demanded.

Miyagi shrugged.

"Fuck if I know," he said. "A woman's mind works in ways we can never understand. If I had to guess, something better came along and caught her eye. Fortunately, I don't have to worry about anything like that with Ayako. Not to be immodest, but there is literally no competition."

"Something _better_?" From force of habit, Rukawa thought of Sendoh and then dismissed the thought summarily. There was no way a sensible girl like Haruko could fall for someone as annoying as Sendoh.

"Something better, yeah. Have you seen any attractive new first-years around lately? Preferably the tall brooding type, since Haruko-chan's been known to have a thing for those. Life is like a box of chocolates for girls like Haruko Akagi. She picks up an English toffee, gives it a once-over, and is about to sink her teeth into it, when her eye falls on a truffle, and she forgets all about the toffee."

Rukawa was not wont to be likened to a toffee, nor did he relish the thought of being rejected by someone whom he had studiously given the cold shoulder for a full year. It hurt his pride. He should have been the one to reject her. If only Haruko Akagi had plucked up the courage to confess her feelings before they faded away!

"Why are you so interested in Haruko-chan's feelings all of a sudden?" asked Miyagi. "Surely you're not in love with her?"

Rukawa scoffed. He barely understood the question. The notion that he could be in love with Haruko Akagi was as ridiculous as the notion that he could be in love with anyone at all.

"Sometimes I forget what a weirdo you are," Miyagi continued. "If you ever do decide to get married, it will probably be to a basketball. Don't forget to invite me to your wedding."

Miyagi left, leaving Rukawa to reflect on his feelings for basketballs. Haruko Akagi was rather like a basketball, he thought: round, bouncy, red of cheeks. He pictured her on his arm in a white dress, veil drawn back over her face, blushing for no one but him.

He scoffed. There was no way he could marry Haruko Akagi. How could he? She was a basketball. Surely that wasn't legal in Japan. He made up his mind to tell Haruko the next time he ran into her that he couldn't possibly marry her.

"I can't marry you," he would say. "You're a basketball."

Those two lines stuck in his head over the next few days like a couplet from an unforgettable poem. He found himself mumbling them under his breath while nodding off in class, found them playing on repeat in his head as he ran up to the goal during practice in preparation for a slam dunk – found them failing him at the crucial moment when Haruko Akagi appeared before him at long last, radiant in her aloofness, so much the more attractive to Rukawa now that she had stopped showing any interest in him.

Her brown eyes, wreathed by long lashes, were directed past him. A wry smile tugged at her red lips. It was now or never.

"Haruko," Rukawa breathed. "I love you."

Haruko giggled.

"Rukawa-kun," she said. "I'm not Haruko Akagi."

end.


End file.
